Zalai Múzeum 11. Kereszténység Pannóniában az első évezredben (Zalaegerszeg, 2002)

Nagy, Mihály: Typological Considerations on Christian Funerary Buildings in Pannonia

ZALAI MÚZEUM 11 2002 Nagy, Mihály Typological Considerations on Christian Funerary Buildings in Pannónia In Pannónia, several Early Christian burial chambers, some of them decorated with frescoes, have partly survived. It means, that after the Roman period the superstructures were usually destroyed, and we can study now mainly the fundaments, or in some favourable cases the underground chambers. The first comprehensive work was done by Lajos Nagy in 1938.

1 According to him, the cellae trichorae of Pannónia are local variants of earlier buildings with similar form and purpose known from Rome. He dates the cellae form Sopianae and Aquincum together with other similar buildings to the 4th century A.D., and supposes an influence from Aquileia. The oblong-shaped burial chapels with one apse at the end may have originated also from Aquileia, 2 while the simpler constructions without apse are closely related to the usual Late Roman burial chambers once popular in Eastern Pannónia.

3 Lajos Nagy reports about Late Roman basilicae as well, which seemingly did not contain burials, so they do not make a part of this article. This is also true for the cella trichora from Savaria.

4 A detailed study of Gyula Gosztonyi have also dealt with the buildings from Sopianae, describing the ones discovered after Nagy's work.

5 The first comprehensive works after Gosztonyi, were published by András Mócsy

6 and Ferenc Fülep. The latter author dates the buildings in the Late Roman cemetery near the present day Bishop's Chruch in Pécs to the second half of the 4th century, stating that chamber no. I cannot be earlier than the years around 380 A.D. The painted chamber no. II is also dated to the last third, while the cella trichora to the last decades of the 4th century.

7 The cella septichora

8 which did not contain any archaeological dating evidence, according to Fülep, judging from its orientation, was constructed at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.

9 The latest summary was written by Endre Tóth.

10 He regards only those buildings Christian, in which wall paintings with Christian symbols were discovered. He also states, that buildings with 3, 5 or 7 apses are characteristic forms that were applied later by Christians as well, although he admits, that a building standing in the centre of a Late Roman cemetery corresponds Christian burial customs, therefore we may say that those buildings were built by Christians.

11 According to Endre Tóth's classification there are two main types of mausolea, one has an underground chamber (originating from the Balkan region), the other, with a more complicated ground plan has no underground chamber, and originates from Italy or Dalmatia.

12 Two local variants of the latter type were found in Kövágószőlős near Pécs, and Alsóhetény (Iovia). Now at this occasion I would like to deal only with one aspect of these monuments, i.e. the analysis of certain characteristic ground plans. Aside the typolgical groupings mentioned above, analysis of metric data of ground plans were not carried out, and no original blueprints were reconstructed so far. We can do it only in those cases, where enough precise metric data, or detailed drawings are available. In the framework of this lecture I will concentrate on two buildings from the most important cities of Late Roman Eastern Pannónia, the cella septichora from Pécs (Sopianae), and the building with five apses from Óbuda (Aquincum). The results of the excavation with a series of exact dimensions of the cella septichora was published by Gyula Gosztonyi in 1940 and 1943.

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